Community environmental memory and emotion on social media: reading ecological grief, longing, and critique in the Birmingham, Alabama Subreddit

In this piece, I attend to the entanglements of community environmental memory, emotion, and pop cultural referentiality as they take shape on Reddit, a discussion-based social media platform. I remix Reddit posts to develop a cultural-geographic practice of interpreting the hauntings of industrial contamination and environmental injustice in Tarrant, Alabama, a de/industrial community bordering Birmingham that hosts one of the largest foundry coke production facilities in the United States. I reflect on what these digital conversations illuminate about environmental memory and the complex range of emotions implicated in contending with ecological degradation. I situate my reflections within scholarship on memory and place and Seymour’s conception of ‘bad environmentalism’ and conclude that digital platforms such as Reddit host vibrant tapestries of community environmental memory and engender complex affective discussions surrounding place and socioecological degradation.